


How Harry Became Verde

by Starchains



Series: Beginnings and Becomings [11]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, Honeymoon, Hospitals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-22 01:23:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3709618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starchains/pseuds/Starchains
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Ginny got sick, Harry was willing to sacrifice anything to cure her. Even things he couldn't afford to lose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Harry Became Verde

Ginny was dying. They'd travelled round the world for their honeymoon, spending two months bouncing from place to place. They'd seen jungles and deserts, lost cities and huge metropolises. It was the most wonderful time Harry had ever experienced. They were free from war, the world was back on its feet. For the first time in his life, he was truly free to spend his time however he wanted. He was married to the woman he loved, the woman he was going to spend the rest of his life with. He loved watching her blush when he told her she was beautiful, loved watching her wave her hands to illustrate her point when she got excited about something. He loved the way she enunciated so clearly when she was angry, as though her speech was sharpened along with her temper. She was so perfect.

When they got home, Ginny developed a cough. When PepperUp hadn't cured it, she'd gone to Madam Pomfrey. Even though they knew that St Mungo's was there, they all preferred to go to the Hogwarts healer, and she was always willing to make house calls for them. When the cough hadn't shifted after a week, they had no choice. Ginny couldn't sleep. She was losing weight. Every time she coughed, it sounded as though she was tearing her lungs to shreds.

She had picked something up on their travels. The magical community was incredibly insular, they knew next to nothing about foreign magical diseases. And this disease was definitely magical; the blood Ginny was coughing up was purple. There was no record of it anywhere. All the healers knew was that it was eating her from the inside out. She had maybe six months left.

Harry called Hermione off her search for her parents. She began retracing his steps, trying to find diseases that matched the description. Harry himself was quarantined. With nothing else to do, trapped in his house which seemed much too big, he threw himself into research. If there wasn't a cure available, he'd make one. He went right back to potions basics, building from the ground up. He asked George for his advice on how to create new potions – he made pranks, not medicine but the idea was the same. As soon as he realised what Harry needed, he began working alongside him, his sister's illness giving him the motivation to keep going that he'd lost with the death of his twin.

With potions covered, Harry delved deeper into spellwork. Could he transfigure new lungs for Ginny? Was there a charm to clean the infection from the cells? Every new thing he learned opened new paths, and it was hard to find the right track. He cried himself to sleep when he realised that he had spent two precious weeks on a dead end.

Harry flooed to St Mungo's every week. At first, Ginny would greet him with a smile, complain about the taste of the potions. They would talk about quidditch games she's heard on the wireless, about letters from her mother. After the first month, all she had the strength to do was watch him, nodding and smiling, muttering responses that he didn't have the heart to tell her he couldn't understand. After the second month, she couldn't even do that, and all he had was the word of the healer's that she even knew that he was there.

The more he researched magic, the less sense it made. He developed a spell which should have returned her cells to a new, healthy state. It turned his hair green. If magic would just follow rules, he could use it, twist it, find something that would help. The very thing that he had loved about magic when he was a wide-eyed eleven year old now disgusted him. He grew to hate magic. It had saved him from the Dursleys, yes, but it had thrown him into a war. And now it was stealing the woman he loved from him.

He turned away from magic and into muggle medicine. He knew that he wouldn't be able to learn enough in time to help, that it took years to become an expert. Despite George's warnings about them – they make you unstable Harry, they take away your emotions – he took potions to increase his intelligence, to help him learn faster, to connect the information and retain it. He knew that his love for Ginny was strong enough to withstand any potion. With his mind sharper, he researched new paths and found promising leads. He was combining muggle and magical in a way that no one ever had before.

He had fought with Ron and Hermione after they had returned empty handed, and they hadn't spoken for almost a month. He had ignored their attempts to talk, and eventually the owls stopped coming. What was the point of sentimental conversation when there was research to do? He refused to waste time on useless frivolities.

Eventually, visiting Ginny became a chore. It was painful to see her lying there so still, when she should be active. She was so vivacious, made for movement, joy and laughter and fire. Every second he spent with her, he itched to get back to his research so that he could find a cure and bring her back. He wanted his wife, not the broken doll lying on a hospital bed.

He was nearing a breakthrough when the floo call came. Ginny had passed away in her sleep. Harry felt something within him snap. The last thread tying him here was gone. His bond with George, formerly such a close friendship, and then a forced closeness fuelled by shared desperation and an almost hopeless cause, had faded into a professional working relationship. He didn't want to stay in the world that had cost him everything, and his muggle work was attracting attention from interesting people. So he packed up and left without a word to the people he would once have called family.

The Veleno Family had been interested in the paralysing agents he'd accidentally created. The research had been completed and published under a fake name of course. Verde might be pathetically obvious as an assumed identity, but hiding the fact that he wanted to hide his past seemed like a waste of time. Now that his wife was dead, he saw no need to waste any more time on useless things.


End file.
